The handsome bird is a little impatient of the company of his own kind, his faithful spouse always excepted; but he quite appreciates the mild deference of Rusty Song Sparrows, the bustling sociability of Western Winter Wrens, or even the intermittent homage of Seattle Wrens. In winter the Fox Sparrows attach themselves to this humble itinerant court, but they are a dozen times more bashful than their chief even.
Only at mating time does Towhee throw caution to the winds. Then he mounts a sapling and drones away by the hour. The damps of ten thousand winters have reduced his song to a pitiful wheeze, but he holds forth as bravely as any of his kin, whééééé whééééé, and again, whééééé. In winter the birds employ a peculiar hissing sound, pssst or bzzzt, not I believe, as a warning—rather as a keep-in-touch call. It was rather heartening tho to hear the full song of Towhee on the 29th of December at Blaine. Comparisons were unnecessary, and the homely trill stood out like a benediction against the dripping silence.
In feeding, Towhees resort chiefly to the ground. They are not careful to observe quiet, and one may follow their movements by the attendant rustling of leaves. Scratching for food is a favorite employment, and this they pursue not by the methodical clutch and scrape of the old hen, but by a succession of spirited backward kicks executed by both feet at once, and assisted by the wings. By this method, not only fallen seeds are laid bare but lurking insects of many sorts, which the bird swiftly devours.
No. 67.
LAZULI BUNTING.
A. O. U. No. 599. Passerina amœna (Say).
Synonyms.—Lazuli Finch.
Description.—Adult male: Head and neck all around cerulean blue; this color carried over upperparts but pure only on rump, elsewhere appearing as skirting of feathers; middle coverts broadly and greater coverts narrowly tipped with white; wings and tail otherwise black; some skirting of ochraceous on back, scapulars and tertials; lores black; chest ochraceous sharply defined from blue above but shading gradually into white of remaining underparts; sides and flanks with outcropping bluish dusky. Bill black above, pale bluish below; feet brownish dusky; iris brown. Adult female: Above grayish brown, the color of male recalled by dull greenish blue of rump and upper tail-coverts and by skirtings of wing- and tail-feathers; middle and greater coverts tipped with light buffy; underparts washed with buffy, most strongly on chest and sides, fading to whitish on belly and under tail-coverts. Young birds resemble the female but lack the bluish-gray of rump and skirtings, and are usually more or less streaked below on chest and sides. Length of adult male: 5.25-5.50 (133.3-139.7); wing 2.87 (73); tail 2.08 (53); bill .39 (9.9); tarsus .67 (17). Female smaller.
Recognition Marks.—Warbler size; color pattern of male distinctive,—female not so easy; in general distinguishable by a softness and uniformity of the grayish brown.
Nesting.—Nest: a loosely constructed, bulky structure made chiefly of dead grasses and strips of soft bark, with a heavy inner lining of hair; placed about three feet up in fork of weed, bush or sapling; measures, outside, 4¼ inches across by 3 in depth, inside, 2½ wide by 1½ deep. Eggs: 4, very pale blue unmarked or, rarely, dotted with reddish brown. Av. size .76 × .56 (19.3 × 14.2). Season: first week in June; one brood.
General Range.—Western United States from eastern border of Great Plains to the Pacific (less common on Pacific slope) north to southern British Columbia (chiefly east of the Cascades); south, in winter, to Cape St. Lucas and the Valley of Mexico.
Range in Washington.—Common summer resident east of Cascade Mountains; less common and of irregular distribution in the Puget Sound region; breeds in Cascades up to 3,000 feet.
Migrations.—Spring: Yakima County May 5, 1906; Chelan May 21, 1896.
Authorities.—? Fringilla amœna, Audubon, Orn. Biog. V. 1839, 64, 230; plates 398, 424. Cyanospiza amœna Baird, Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. IX. 1858, p. 505. T. C&S. D¹. Ra. D². Ss¹. Ss². J. B. E.
Specimens.—U. of W. P¹. Prov. B. E.
One can scarcely believe his eyes as this jewel flashes from a thicket, crosses a space of common air, and disappears again all in a trice. Either there has been some optical illusion, or Nature has grown careless to fling her turquoises about in such fashion. We must investigate. Upon arrival, somewhere about the 10th of May, and before the return of his dun-colored mate, the male Lazuli is quite conscious of his prominence in the landscape. He avoids notice and goes bounding away if closely pressed; but love soon makes him bold, and he will pursue the object of his affections into the very thicket where you stand. Then, while the female lurks timidly within, he mounts a spray and yields an outburst of music, piercing and earnest, if not too sweet. We see that his blue is deep azure, or turquoise, rather than that of the lapis lazuli from which he is named. The red of his breast is nearly that of the Robin’s, while the pure white of the remaining underparts completes a patriotic study in red, white, and blue. The female shows something of the color pattern of her mate, with the important exception that dull brown supplants the royal blue of head and back. After all, then, they are fitted for separate spheres: she to skulk and hide and escape the hostile eye in the discharge of her maternal duties; he to lose himself against the blue of heaven, as he sings reassuringly from a tree-top, or sends down notes of warning upon the approach of danger.
The song of the Lazuli Bunting is a rambling warble, not unlike that of the Indigo Bunting (C. cyanea), but somewhat less energetic. Its brief course rises and falls in short cadences and ends with a hasty jumble of unfinished notes, as tho the singer were out of breath. Moreover, the bird does not take his task very seriously, and he does not burden the mid-day air with incessant song, as does his tireless cousin.
Somewhere in the shrubbery and tangle, whether of saplings, berry-bushes, roses, ferns, or weeds, a rather bulky nest is built about an upright fork, at a height of two or three feet from the ground. A nest observed in Yakima County was begun on the 19th of June and practically completed by the afternoon of the following day,—this altho the first egg was not laid until the 26th. “Hemp,” milkweed fibers, and dried grasses were used in construction, and there was an elaborate lining of horse-hair (poor dears; what will they do when the automobile has fully supplanted the horse?).
Taken near Spokane. Photo by Fred S. Merrill.
A LAZULI BUNTING’S NEST.